Programming note

The best policy measures are those that address more than one major problem at once. Health-care reform expanded access to underserved patients while improving the United States' long-term fiscal picture. Cap-and-trade would reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change while reducing our dependence on oil from unsavory regimes. And adopting a comprehensive child care and early education system would allow millions more parents -- mostly mothers -- to enter the workforce while helping reduce the achievement gap between rich and poor students.

Two of these three policies have gotten plenty of attention on blogs like this one. Child care and pre-K policy, however, has not. This week, I'm going to try to remedy that. I'm no expert on the subject, but I've spent last week and this one talking to a lot of people who are, and I'll be posting interviews with them throughout the week. There are two main facets to the topic -- pre-K education policies designed primarily to benefit students, and child care policies designed primarily to let parents work -- and you'll be hearing from experts on both, as well as from people intimately familiar with the political challenges involved in achieving a universal child care and early education system.

The first interview will be posted shortly, so stay tuned.

Dylan Matthews is a student at Harvard and a researcher at The Washington Post.

By Dylan Matthews
It's in Wonkbook, but I wanted to highlight Laurence Seidman's op-ed on using unemployment level triggers as part of stimulus proposals. I could do without his requirement for balanced budgets when the unemployment rate falls below 6 percent, but this seems very sound:

By Kate Sheppard
Among the many positive outcomes of carbon-reduction policy often ignored when looking at the costs are the health benefits. In fact, health savings due to improvements in air quality alone would outweigh the potential costs of cutting carbon, as one study earlier this year found.

By Jonathan Bernstein
In my earlier post responding to Dylan Matthews, I didn't get around to talking about or even citing the excellent Charlie Savage NYT article he was working from. That's a mistake on my part: It's an excellent article, and I recommend it.